This 24/7 Wall Street article displays three common media ailments: hyperbole, a love for top ten lists, and an obsession with December predictions for the coming year (which off course OSNews is obviously also falling victim to), and there are some predictable losers on this list (Blockbuster Video, anyone?). I thought it would be an interesting topic for OSNews because three of the companies/brands are quite familiar to us: Palm, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems.

Their financials look bad right now only because of the split-off of their chip-making part they had recently. Now that those charges and hits are over, and the settlement of the lawsuit spat with Intel (where Intel is giving *AMD* a huge chunk of cash) has happened, and the economy starts to rebound, they'll do better, just as they've always done.

They have had great products for years but that has not translated into profits or market share.

Its been this way for the last 2 *decades*, and for all that time people have been predicting AMD's demise, and for all that time, AMD has been disappointing everyone. There's a reason for this: all the other players want at least one alternative to Intel to be available (see below).

Intel graphics dominate the market.

You're joking right? Or are you just talking about the graphically 'weaker' laptop/netbook market? AMD has ATI's graphics technology now, which blow Intel's stuff out of the water in terms of performance. AMD's IGP parts are now getting *much* better (see their 780G/790G parts - Intel has nothing like them). Even in the laptop market, now that they have the old ATI tech, AMD is far from dead. As the other poster mentioned, AMD's 'Fusion' (ATI's graphics tech + AMD's CPU tech on the same silicon) will likely guarantee their survival in the laptop & low-end desktop markets of the future. Meanwhile their current IGP parts & graphics cards are beating everyone else in the higher-up markets.

Intel has both

Thats obvious, *especially* to the other market players. That's the one thing everyone keeps ignoring: AMD is the only competition Intel has, the only reason they were able to do x86 parts so long ago was because Intel had to form an agreement with someone else because the players of that time, namely IBM, didn't want to depend on a single source (and have one company control that source). Those fears haven't changed one bit, there are way too many people (companies & governments) who have a vested interest in Intel having at least a 'token' competitor (and an alternate source for x86 parts). AMD won't disappear for that reason alone.

I'd bet that even the last thing Intel wants is for AMD to go under, as that would put them back in the bullseye of the antitrust hawks in both the US and Europe. Intel doesn't want to see AMD go away, they want them to just 'stick around' they way they have been doing for the last 20 odd years.

You're joking right? Or are you just talking about the graphically 'weaker' laptop/netbook market? "

That *is* the most important market, don't you think? Some people buy expensive hardware with high-performance graphics. A lot more buy what's cheap, and for them, sufficient. Sure, Intel's graphics are crap in terms of performance, but they're good enough for many...

A lot more buy what's cheap, and for them, sufficient. Sure, Intel's graphics are crap in terms of performance, but they're good enough for many...

Right, except AMD is now redefining what is 'sufficient' for the medium and low ends of the market. I happen to be using an AMD IGP in my desktop (the 790GX that I mentioned earlier), and this thing is so good, I may never buy a higher-end graphics card (I'm not a hard-core gamer). It can even do accelerated OpenGL 3D well enough play a lot of simpler/older games, and amazingly, it can do all this while being passively cooled (and quiet!).

Like I said, Intel has nothing like it, and AMD is now in process of pushing this tech down into the low-end laptop/netbook segment. AMD's Fusion is likely going to cause Intel much grief.